Delightful 'Big Box Reuse' looks at how abandoned stores are being reinvented

Few writers who focus on the architecture and planning of cities take suburbia or small towns seriously. The tendency since World War II has been to scoff at life amid the outer loops as vacuous, spiritually empty, socially isolating, intellectually brain-dead and all around bad for your health.

MIT Press, 251 pp., $29.95

In her delightful debut book on how communities across the country are reusing vacant big-box stores, Julia Christensen, an artist and Henry R. Luce Visiting Professor of the Emerging Arts at Oberlin College, plants herself firmly against this tradition.

"Big Box Reuse" rests on the solid observation that while aging buildings everywhere have been "adaptively reused," most scholars and journalists have focused on historic buildings in downtowns, not relatively new buildings in suburbs.

But as Christensen writes in her introduction, "by considering constructions of the very recent past that often go unnoticed, like strip malls and retail centers, we stumble upon hidden histories, unseen forces that are altering the landscape without critical thought or collective foresight."

Christensen has uncovered a fascinating trend. Using her abundant skills both as a photographer and as a writer, she has documented how 10 communities across the United States have reclaimed vacant big-box stores, most often Kmarts and Wal-Marts.

A vacant Wal-Mart in Bardstown, Ky., Christensen's hometown, became a justice center. A Wal-Mart in Round Rock, Texas, a fast-growing suburb of Austin, was converted into an indoor go-cart raceway for a time. Other stores around the country have been turned into day-care centers, charter schools, libraries, even churches.

Christensen's voice is occasionally ingenuous, and her book could have been benefited from more analysis and fewer anecdotes. Not all of the stories she collected are equally exciting.

But her mixture of journalistic observation and down-to-earth sociology -- and her approach to architecture and planning as an outsider -- bears a resemblance to the work of Jane Jacobs, who upended orthodox Modernist city planning with her famous 1961 book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

And Christensen can write a powerful sentence, noting that "there are thousands of empty big box buildings all over the United States right this minute, rising in property value, like giant savings accounts asleep on the asphalt."

At times, Christensen's upbeat approach leads to debatable conclusions. She celebrates, for example, America's love for the automobile, which sounds anachronistic when endless sprawl may not be environmentally or politically sustainable. Her positive slant on the places she writes about is sometimes contradicted by her own photographs, in which vast parking lots look like deserts, and remodeled big boxes are redecorated with kitschy, faux-classical facades.

But the stories she tells of suburban revitalization provide strong evidence that suburbs and small towns are evolving in startling new ways. "Big Box Reuse" gives that phenomenon welcome and serious attention.

DINING OUT

Over the last year, there has been no shortage of openings in the Cleveland dining scene. From barbecue to hot pot to coffee shops, this guide leads you through the new must-try additions to the city. ... Read more»